From Behind the Desk

Vision for Life - Pittsburgh has been running Facebook ad campaigns for three years now. For most of that period, we were generating, on average, 11 calls a month to pregnancy medical centers -- not bad, when you consider that this was not an audience seeking abortions or pregnancy help.

​The numbers began to drop last Spring, however, and I was looking at possible reasons why. ​The most obvious reason was that every young woman on Facebook had seen the ads -- "Don't choose alone" -- and the campaign was simply tired, faded. I read that videos and combined video/slideshow posts were actually much more successful in reaching and engaging viewers, so we have tried our hand at it. When I say "we," I mean a team of volunteers -- Carley Adams, Cassandra Adams, David Adams, David Bodin, Emily Bonessi, Katie Breckenridge, and myself. We have produced two videos. You can see the first video on YouTube.

Here's a graph showing the response so far: over 7,500 have seen the video, and there were 103 unique "link clicks," that is, 103 viewers "clicked through" to the Women's Choice Network website. That's more than 100 young people (70% women), who now know about a pregnancy medical center organization with offices in Oakland, Wexford, Monroeville and the North Side.

About 40% of clients at pregnancy help centers come by word-of-mouth advertising. Jake Barr of iRapture and I are talking regularly about using Facebook to encourage friends to tell friends about local pregnancy medical centers -- in my case, Choices Pregnancy Services and Women's Choice Network. The hope is that people who like our Facebook pages ("Pittsburgh Choices," "Unexpected"), and people who are like those people, will be willing to say something if a friend says that she's pregnant, and she's thinking about abortion. This is a different audience than the pregnant woman herself, but I think it says all the right things to any woman in this age bracket.

​We know that many women feel coerced or forced into abortion -- that they "have no choice." Ironically, it is Planned Parenthood and other abortion industry members that do their best to narrow choices down to abortion: they make money that way, and, no doubt for some counselors/sales people, it is part of justifying their own abortions, or their complicity in the killing. It is the pregnancy medical centers that truthfully describe all the options: raising a child oneself, placing a child for adoption, or aborting the child. Many women feel that they can't manage their situations with another child; often, it is not a matter of serious hardship, but of morale -- everyone around her is telling her to "get rid of it." A woman can be surprised to find out, for example, that she can continue to go to school and have a baby. "Coercion" can be subtle or unmistakable: the leading cause of death for pregnant women is murder. A woman's psychological state in a time of crisis is also a big factor in the question of coercion.

Here's our second video ad for Facebook. Carley and Cassandra, sisters, play best friends. What does a friend say when a woman says she's pregnant, and it's going to mess up her life?

An article on coerced abortion gives us a sense of what women are going through. "The problem of women feeling pressured into unwanted abortions is . . . acute in light of research into the risk of defective decision making in crisis situations.

"Experts on crisis counseling have found that those who are in a state of crisis are increasingly vulnerable to outside influences and have less trust in their own opinions and abilities to make the right decision. Such 'heightened psychological accessibility'[5]can lead to a situation where parents, counselors, or others in authority can have enormous influence over a woman’s decision. 'A relatively minor force, acting for a relatively short time, can switch the whole balance from one side or to the other—to the side of mental health or to the side of ill health.'[6] Persons in crisis 'are less in touch with reality . . . and more vulnerable to change than they are in non-crisis periods.'[7] They often experience feelings of tiredness, lethargy, hopelessness, inadequacy, confusion, anxiety, and disorganization. Thus, they are more likely to stand back and let other people make their decisions for them, instead of protecting themselves from decisions that may not be in their best interests.

"A person who is upset and trapped in a crisis wants to reestablish stability, and is therefore very susceptible to any influence from others who claim to be able to solve the crisis, especially those who have status or authority.[8] Thus, with a minimal effort on the part of a mental health professional, family member, minister, or male partner, an enormous amount of leverage may be exerted upon a woman who is in a crisis situation.[9] This can be a dangerous situation for a woman who doesn’t really want an abortion but has others around her who push for it.

. . .

​"What women experience as 'pressure' to abort may involve indirect but significant pressure such as withholding love, approval and personal or practical support from the woman unless she agrees to an abortion. Or it may be overt, as in abuse or an outright threat to abandon or expel the woman from her home if she does not abort her child. In many cases, the pressure is applied intentionally by others. In other cases, the “pressure” is not intended, but simply perceived by the woman. For instance, if her boyfriend exhibits an unenthusiastic response to the news that she is pregnant, she may see this as his way of telling her that he will not help to support her or their child."

​The videos we have made may resonate with a well-to-do, educated audience. This is not the group who are having most of the abortions: abortion patients are more often poor, and disproportionately black. They are more likely to feel explicitly pressured to have an abortion. We will be looking to see if we can't produce materials that appeal to this audience as well.​ It will be a challenge to find the right actors, and the right scripts, and to keep the material upbeat enough that it will encourage women to call the pregnancy medical centers, and get past the Facebook censors (who really just care that people enjoy Facebook). Pray for our success, please.

There are many facebook follower who are finding some of the best videos and latest but your facebook page is truly help me to find the latest information. I must follow your page and recommended to my friends that they join this page. Thank you for share this nice info.

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Chris Humphrey

9/24/2017 08:12:11 am

Thanks for your kind words. Let us know if you have any questions, and I'll see if I can address them in future blog posts.

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Chris Humphrey has been involved in pro-life activity of one kind or another since the late 1970s, when he first looked at the subject of abortion in seminary in Canada. He has an undergraduate degree in English (University of Toronto), and M.A. and Ph.D. in religious studies (McGill). He has had a varied career as a pastor, chaplain in a psychiatric hospital, editor of academic and instructional publications, semi-professional photographer, and home renovator. He is a husband of over 40 years to Edith (a Professor of New Testament), father to three girls, and grandfather to twelve grandchildren. He lives and works in the Stanton Heights neighborhood of Pittsburgh.